We have an often dramatic example of the use of contrasts in
anticipation
of people in our tendency to use stereotypes. A
stereotype
is a relatively simple and inflexible set of traits consistently
applied
to some category of people: Men are aggressive and oversexed;
Women
are weak and talkative; Fat people are jolly and lazy; The Dutch are
very
clean but real cheapskates.

Stereotyping is a normal part of our functioning -- simplifying
things
a bit helps us to keep track of all the complexities of social
life.
It's okay as long as reality remains the ultimate arbiter of
truth.
But that is often not the case. Here are a few of the potential
pitfalls:

1. Sweeping generalization: Taking the
traits
associated with a group and forcing them onto an individual who belongs
to that group. An individual member of a group need not reflect
the
traits associated with the group, even if those traits are
accurate.
Norms need not be adhered to; averages are fictions. Your author
is a chubby person, so allow me to use "fat people" as the
example:
We may have good reason to believe that fat people are slow. Yet
I have met fat people who can trounce skinny ones on the tennis
court!
How would you like to be denied a job because your appearance suggests
to the employer that you won't work efficiently?

2. Hasty generalization: Taking the traits
of
an individual and assuming they apply to all members of his or her
group.
We often build our stereotypes on the flimsiest of foundations, such as
the following.

Second-hand information: Many, if not most,
stereotypes
are based on what others tell us--our families, teachers, friends,
media,
etc.--who may, in fact, have heard it from someone else again.
Where
did you get that stereotype of Arabs, for example? Have you
actually
met an Arab? How well did you get to know them, if you did?

Out-dated information: Even if the second-hand
information
contains some truth, it may well be based on experiences of long
ago.
Do Arabs still -- or did they ever -- live in tents? Or is
this something you saw in old movies? Many stereotypes are rooted
in the hatreds towards immigrant groups 100 or more years ago.

Limited samples: Whether the stereotype is
second-hand
or is based on personal experience, it may well be based on limited
experience
with the group in question. If you have indeed met some Arabs,
how
many have you met, and are they a representative population?

Or take Italian food: Most Americans think of Italian food as
involving pasta, olive oil, and tomato sauce; in fact, much Italian
food
is a matter of bread, fish, butter, and white sauce. Most
immigrants
to the U.S. were from the southern regions of Italy, and that is the
"sample"
of cooking we are familiar with!

Vividness: What is most noticeable about a group,
what makes them more different from ourselves or others, is often
falsely
considered to be "normal." Arabs are oil-rich, the Dutch wear
wooden
shoes, American Indians wear feathers...all three of these are
exceptional,
yet, because they are distinctive, they stick in our minds.

Polynesians are sensual, Japanese extremely polite... even when the
characteristics contain a certain amount of truth, they often hide
other,
equally true, characteristics. The Polynesians, for example, have
some pretty strict rules about modesty, and the Japanese can be very
direct,
even cruel, when dealing with outsiders.

3. Unjustified inferences: We add
information
that is or was not there. Inferences from observations that we
can
make in our own society may be entirely irrelevant when we look at
another
society. In our society, for example, bathing once a week is
considered
dirty, and dirty is considered antisocial, and antisocial is very, very
bad. But do we have a right to make such implications? Does
dirty mean bad? And some cultures consider us rather dirty: The
Japanese,
for example, wash themselves completely before getting into a
bath.
Or, to take another example, ragged clothes may mean mental illness in
the suburbs, but it just means poverty elsewhere.

This is often rooted in poor understanding: We seldom have all
the information we need to understand another group of people.
There
are often reasons for "bizarre" behaviors that would make them seem
less
so. In some countries, for example, water is less plentiful and
the
dryness evaporates most of our perspiration. In poor countries,
plumbing
and clean water may be hard to find. In cold countries, bathing
may
be downright dangerous. We forget that our own grandparents
rarely
bathed more than once a week. Besides, in many places, people do
not have the rather intense attitude we have about body smells -- you
don't
have to be antiseptic to be clean.

It can also be a matter of self-fulfilling prophecies: People
often become what we expect them to be. For a fat person, being
"jolly"
might mean acceptance, for example. For some ethnic groups, you
show
your pride by exaggerating your "ethnicity." American Indians of
different tribes, for example, have adopted each others' dress,
rituals,
and art. And it's Dutch Americans who hang wooden
shoes
on their doors!

With all these pitfalls to something so normal as stereotyping, it
is
no wonder we have problems!

PREJUDICE AS DISSONANCE

All by itself, stereotyping can certainly lead to problems like
discrimination.
But it doesn't account for the heat, the anger, we often see among
prejudiced
people. Prejudice is often defined in terms of strong negative
emotion
-- where does the emotion come from?

If you recall, distress comes from failure to anticipate -- from
incongruities
and dissonance. Let's look at some of the incongruities that can
lead to hatred:

Disruption of daily routine: People who are
"different"
can disrupt your life. In the English countryside, for example,
there
is a strong dislike for Gypsies. They pull into these quaint,
quiet
English villages in their caravans, park on the roadsides, live outside
their wagons, make music and dance, sell their services, tell fortunes,
steal... and generally throw the village into turmoil!

The simplest example: The "mentally ill" usually make us
nervous.
They behave so unpredictably!

Threat to group security: These outsiders may be a
threat to more than just peace and quiet. Gypsies, for example,
have
earned at least some of their reputation for trouble. Guest
workers
in Europe may bring somewhat more violent cultural habits with
them.
City kids may bring more sexually promiscuous habits into the suburbs,
etc., etc.

Understand that, while some of these fears may be based on unfounded
stereotypes, some are quite legitimate concerns. The motivation
for
having our own groups in the first place is to keep life safe, simple,
and predictable, and outsiders may threaten that social order.

Threat to the pocketbook: Economic well-being is a
central concern for most people. But those whose economic
well-being
is threatened by outsiders are more likely to be angry about it.
Historically, we find...

It is most often a matter of a poor, low-status group angry at a
poorer,
lower-status group that threatens to displace them.

Threat to group integrity or identity: An ethnic
group
can be defined in many ways... skin color, religious practices,
language,
political beliefs, dress, celebrations.... When the things that
define
the group are compromised in some way, so that the future of the group
is at stake, people get "nervous."

The future of the group is most clearly to be found in its children,
and so we would expect that that's where much of our concern should
be:
What if they start acting like them? dressing like them? talking
like them? believing what they believe? dating each
other?
marrying each other?

If your kid marries someone of a different religion, and their kids
are raised in the other religion -- your grandchildren are "lost" to
you.
You might as well have never had kids at all! Or what if you son
marries a German girl and goes to live there. He and their kids
are
no longer Americans. Your own descendants are foreigners!
Or
if your grandchildren grow up speaking Spanish! (It is said that
the best way to take away a person's culture is to take away his
language.
The Irish to the contrary, this often seems to be true.)

If your kid marries someone of a different race, what are your
grandchildren?
Black or white? The old tradition was that they were black, that
the "blood" of the group with higher status was "tainted" by the blood
of the group with the lower status. Today, children of biracial
marriages
are more likely to consider themselves biracial, which is certainly
more
enlightened. But think of the identity problem that comes with it
when you live in a society that insists on classifying you one way or
the
other!

Maybe someday we'll all just consider ourselves human beings.

The preceding reasons for anger are, in fact, rather
reasonable.
They are problems that we may make efforts to address. There is
another
source of incongruity that is less reasonable: The inferiority
complex.

There is something wrong with me -- and you are reminding me of
it!
My poverty or ignorance or stupidity or lack of success or unhappiness
or insecurity or sexual frustration or marital problems or whatever...
are your fault. After all, before you came around, I didn't have
these problems -- or didn't notice them as much. Or perhaps I
can't
even figure out what is making me so angry -- it certainly can't be
myself,
so it must be you!

Further, weak people, frustrated people, often seek to lose their
embarrassingly
tiny identities in their group identities. My group
is
great, so maybe a little of that greatness will rub off on
me.
And hatred of others helps to maintain the intensity of that group
identity,
just like our fervor for our favorite team becomes especially intense
when
the competition becomes intense!

The target of our anger may be a group which is causing us some real
distress, such as economic competition or the other things mentioned
above.
Or it may simply be a traditional, socially-sanctioned target (a
scapegoat).
Either way, I've been told since childhood -- by my mom, my dad, my
friends,
my teachers, my preachers, my television set -- that we're better than
you and that, therefore, I am better than you.

But there's that black guy with his Lincoln Continental -- where did
he get the money? And that woman, she's a lawyer -- wonder what
she
did to pass the bar? And that Puerto Rican who gets all the girls
-- what do they see in that guy anyway?

Under every superiority complex, they say, hides an inferiority
complex.

BIGOTRY AS DISSONANCE-FIXING

Much bigotry is just an effort to maintain the status quo:
We're
on top -- let's keep it that way.

But, to the extent that our conceptions of another people are
misconceptions,
we will be confronted with contradictions. When we really look at
these others, we see hints of their humanity, their needs, their
talents,
their good natures, the reasons for their behaviors, their ability to
compete
on an equal footing... and we need to defend against all this
conflicting
information.

After all, nice people like us don't hurt other nice people!
(Remember?)

The most basic thing to do would be denial: The
information
has to be much stronger to get through. For example, a woman may
find that she has to work twice as hard to get recognition for her
work.

Or we can engage in distortion. You can be labeled
"the exception:" "One or two make it, every now and then." This
is
usually accompanied by an explanation: "His mother is
white;"
"She's terribly masculine, probably a Lesbian."

Another way to distort is to question the means by which
someone succeeded: "All successful Italians got there through
their
mob connections;" "She slept her way to the top."

Another one, when you cannot question their capabilities, is
to
question their motives: "They become doctors for the
money."
A couple of Air Force officers told me once in all seriousness, "There
are three kinds of women in the Air Force: Lesbians,
nymphomaniacs,
and the ones who are looking for husbands." In other words, they
may be capable, but they certainly aren't noble or anything.

But there are worse ways to fix the dissonance:

Discrimination: Housing and jobs are the obvious
ones.
Less obvious is "institutional discrimination" -- things that seem to
be
reasonable, but effectively discriminate anyway: literacy tests
for
voting, height requirements for police, trailer laws in English
villages....
And don't forget the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy: If we
deny certain people education, for example, they seem so ignorant, so
perhaps
we needn't bother to educate them; if we only permit them menial work,
perhaps that's all their capable of; if we deny them access to decent
housing,
perhaps they like to live in squalor....

Further, we can threaten them (e.g. the Klan's cross-burnings),
remove
them (e.g. placing people on reservations or concentration camps),
enslave
them (e.g. forced labor, or economic enslavement, or just plain
slavery),
or simply destroy them (e.g. what the Nazi's attempted to do with Jews,
Gypsies, homosexuals, and others).

Note: It's easy to say all this evil is due to a Nazi
mentality,
or to some flaw in whites or Europeans or males or whatever. But
history shows that to be a prejudice in itself: No ethnic group,
race, religion, government... has shown itself to be above these
evils.
When one group has power over another, that power seems to be --
inevitably,
perhaps? -- abused. A pessimistic conclusion, I'm afraid.